Like Spinning Plates
by flecksofpoppy
Summary: Trowa watches a televised broadcast of a speech made by Relena and reflects on Heero acting as her bodyguard.


**Like Spinning Plates**  
The song "Like Spinning Plates" is © Radiohead.  
Completed around 2002-2003

He stands beside her, a collection of flickering tiny dots when you look close enough. I've stared at so many screens, I know that pallid light, not bright enough to light up a room. It's a glow that decides what to let you see, decides with bias what it will touch, what the entire ashy cloud will cover. In a room with a computer, the unlit parts lie in darkness and wait.

I waited. And waited. And then the wait was over because everything was over.

_while you make pretty speeches_

Individual circles of color bleed into one another as I step back further and further, and I can see his face. The further away I move, the less perfect those circles are and I can see him as a whole. They condense and there he is, hands behind his back, eyes roving past the camera and beyond into the crowd, his shoulders stiff and rigid from the uniform he's wearing. In the television, he is a perfect series of circles.

_I'm being cut to shreds_

Relena talks about peace but never about pacifism, not anymore. Her hair glistens in the televised sun from Sanq, and Heero somehow remains her shadow, dark and foreboding. He looks like some wingless gargoyle next to her. I touch the screen, and I can feel the static lightly jump at my fingers and fizzle around the tips. Sensation.

Her starry words ring in my ears, and I mute it so that her mouth moves, and the words fall upon the silence of the room. Inside my head I can hear myself speaking in her place: "This is my speech to all of you who we saved, all of you who fought us: We are weak, and we still are weak." Relena tells us we're strong, that we will survive.

_you feed me to the lions_

You touched me. With your electric hands, you touched me. I screamed for something, but touching is no reason for living. I touch everything; icicles, petals that break under my fingers, the wet, bitter taste of lemonade, the crackle of dried, dead leaves.

I can't see his hands on the screen, but I know them: a collection of rough fingers too light to be completely brutal. He is the only person I know who has fought against his human nature and partially won out.

_a delicate balance_

She is like a personified Justice with scales that don't tip, even though they have to eventually. The guilt slowly piles up, and before she has to judge anyone she quickly makes sure the other side balances out. Slowly, over the years, she has been putting more and more weight on her scales. Soon, her shoulders are going to collapse. I can see it in the way that the corners of her mouth tighten and her knuckles whiten under an onslaught of reporters' questions. She answers, graceful, heir to a throne, a princess in blood, and then collapses.

_well, this just feels like spinning plates_

Heero kneels down in a rush, shouting something. I can't hear him over the muted television. They rush around like flies, gathering up their precious burden and carrying her away. The public wants it to be a scandal. They want their beloved Relena poisoned or pregnant, dying or breaking down. They want to see her fail and then come back in full force; they want to fight the war with her from their bedroom televisions and win by default. They'll root for their poor, wretched princess so that they can love her. People need a reason to love.

_I'm living in cloud cuckoo land_

Here, in my head, I don't need a reason. I don't need to feel to know that I want to, or that I have before. Catherine is knocking at the door of my trailer, and suddenly I can hear motion outside. Everyone was watching the broadcast.

The television screen bursts into static, and it is like a fire is blazing, people running back and forth through the circus campground. What has happened to their fragile peace, they're asking. Peace like the bubbles that children blow with soapy water in slum streets during summer. Floating on a breeze for as long as it can be carried until it bursts.

_this just feels like spinning plates_

"What happened?" she's shouting, opening the door to find me staring at a screen full of static. She just stands behind me, her speech abruptly cut short, and I can feel her fear so strongly in the air that it prickles at the back of my neck.

"She's exhausted," I reply calmly, my voice quiet. The silence of the muted television was not supposed to be disturbed. "She's spinning plates on very long sticks right now. Heero will take care of her."

_our bodies floating down the muddy river_

"Yes," I say, turning away, "Heero has always done that."


End file.
